I really do fear for the Grandkids.

I know about the old cliché where I look back and say the Good Old Days were the best, and I know about rose tinted glasses and all that shit, but society really does seem to be heading for a miserable and dangerous future.

It’s happening on two fronts.  There is the startling increase in the way the state is taking control of our private lives, and dictating how we live either by imposing laws or by penalising those of us who continue to attempt to retain control over our own lives.  Society at large seems oblivious to this, and not only accepts the greater control but in some cases actively encourages it.

The second front is in the area of technology.

Now I confess to being a little intrigued by computers and all the things that can be done with them, but I am a firm believer that computers should be firmly kept in their place – as tools rather than controllers.

We have reached the point where demand no longer drives innovation and have entered an era where innovation creates its own demand.  Some bright spark discovers that there is sufficient computing power in a mobile phone to include a camera, so people are brainwashed into the concept that all mobile phones have to have a camera or else they are no good.  On the face of it, that might seem like a good idea, but how many foresaw the dangers?  How many predicted the proliferation of private and sometimes intimate photographs that would be posted for the world to see, many without consent?

Now we are experiencing the “Internet of Things”.  Again, whizz kids are dreaming up ways to insert chips into everyday objects and connecting them to the Net.  Again, this may seem like a good idea, but how many people actually stop to think of the implications?

Once again the world is being attacked by a virus.  In the Good Old Days a virus meant that you probably lost that thesis you had been writing, or that your first and precious novel vanished into Cyberspace, but things are somewhat more dangerous now.  Now we have major firms, transport systems, power utilities and nuclear power plants relying on the Net to function, and the virus makes no distinction.  It doesn’t care if it has just wiped your wedding photographs or drained the coolant from a nuclear reactor – it just fucks things up indiscriminately.

I have a few things connected to the Web.  However, every single item on my network has one purpose and one purpose only – entertainment.  Okay, I have business files but they are stored away from the Web, or else on the Web itself, so if I am attacked by a virus all I lose is some music, some recent photographs and some porn films.  Would I allow the Web to control my heating, my electricity or my home security?  Would I fuck!  Why the hell should I connect my refrigerator or my shower to the fucking Interweb?   It makes no sense whatsoever, but they would all become vulnerable to hacking.

As for driverless cars!  God help us but that’s a nightmare to behold.  People scream that computers are more reliable than a human, but I would contend that humans can react to the unforeseen whereas computers can only react to whatever has been programmed in.  And who are you going to blame when a driverless car that has been hacked by a fourteen year old in his back bedroom, careers across the road and wipes out your family?  The kid?  The passengers in the car?  The car manufacturer?  The software company?

Talking of software companies, what the blind fuck are essential utilities [and Chernobyl Nuclear Plant] doing using fucking Microsoft Windows?  It is the most hacked most vulnerable system on the planet yet they persist in using it?  Have they not learned from decades of security breaches?  Do they not realise it is an open invitation to hackers?  Madness.  Utter insanity.

Incidentally, if you are daft enough to be using Windows to read this….  Just crate a read-only file called perfc and stick it into C:\windows\ folder.  That’ll protect your machine from the latest attack at least.

Though why I should help out anyone who uses Windows is beyond me.

You get what you deserve.